In the second half of the 20th century, the standard of food available in British restaurants and through public catering improved enormously. But the name associated with this transformation more than any other was Hungarian – that of the critic Egon Ronay, who has died aged 94. Short, dapper and trim, he was personally courteous and great fun. He had the sort of alert, bright and optimistic personality that could make things happen by persuasion. None- theless, in any professional discussion as to how eating could be made better he could also be extremely pugilistic, always looking to increase awareness through stimulating controversy. When journalists joined him in the events he organised, exploring all sorts of food, the unworthy thought of a luxurious freebie was always subordinate to the expectation that something potentially newsy, and with plenty of arresting quotes, was in the air.

What made his name a byword for sound culinary judgment in the public mind was the publication of the Egon Ronay guides, the brand reinforced by the round Egon Ronay signs in hotel and restaurant windows. Selling the titles to the AA in 1985 proved to be the greatest regret of his business life, and after various setbacks he regained control of the publishing rights in 1997. The title wording alone of the 2006 Egon Ronay's Guide to the Best Restaurants and Gastropubs in the UK points to the revolution that he did so much to promote.

Born into a Budapest family, Ronay was educated from 10 to 18 at the school of the Piarist Order: in a 2004 letter to the Guardian, he looked back on the teaching of the Catholic priests with "respect and affection". At home, the prevailing culture was that of the restaurant business. His grandfather inherited a restaurant soon after the start of the century, and his father ran a chain of five high-class establishments, one of which Egon grew up above.

After gaining a law degree at Budapest University, he trained in the family firm's kitchens, and abroad, finishing at the Dorchester Hotel in London. He had hoped to further his law studies at Trinity Hall, Cambridge, but the second world war kept him in Budapest. In December 1944, Russian forces arrived to force the Germans out: the Ronay business proper had been destroyed, but Egon made the most enterprising gesture he could by selling cups of coffee from the shell of the largest restaurant. He was saved from being deported to Siberia only through being recognised by one of his Russian soldier customers.

In October 1946, Ronay was back in London, and managed three restaurants in Piccadilly that were owned by a family friend. Soon after arriving, Ronay was shocked to see how sugar was dispensed in a buffet at Victoria Station – with a teaspoon on a string next to the tea-urn, to be left for the next user. He also quickly came to appreciate how the British class system served to suppress the discerning palate: "The first thing I discovered was that public school food was abominable and its victims were taught to be uncomplaining. And the product of that system was the British customer. They had no taste for food and the restaurateur had no audience to play to. His customer was an object of contempt. And British food got the reputation it deserved." Ronay realis- ed that his catering mission to London was obvious.

By borrowing £4,000, in 1952 he was able to take over a tearoom at 6 Hans Road, Knightsbridge, close to Harrods department store, refurbish it so that its interior resembled that of a tent, and so open it as The Marquee restaurant. The quality of its French cuisine was recognised by Fanny Cradock, soon to become one of the early television chefs, who at the time was reviewing restaurants for the Daily Telegraph.

It was also noticed by Raymond Postgate's new publication, The Good Food Guide, and Ronay came to realise that catering is work, while business is money. The Michelin guides were doing well in France, The Good Food Guide was enjoying some success in Britain, and so, in 1957, Ronay researched his first book, published it and sold it – at three shillings (15p) – himself. It sold more than 30,000 copies. He built up his concern through soliciting sponsors and recruiting enough "inspectors" to fill 1,000 pages of hotels and restaurants in Britain. Apart from his own acerbic introductions, the book's entries were not in themselves interesting or entertaining – but they were systematic.

By 1980, there was a part-time staff of 50. The worst job belonged to six permanent inspectors who were each expected to eat 11 meals, drive, go by train and eventually fly hundreds of miles every week, living out of a suitcase. "It's a great life," remarked Ronay in that amalgam of English, Hungarian and a hint of kitchen French, "for at least a fortnight. After that it gets to be hell."

Every meal was eaten anonymously: he "never even accepted a glass of brandy" without paying, and the integrity of the project was a source of fierce pride. Indeed, where standards of mass catering were concerned, it was also a source of fierce anger: the guides had the effect "of telling people that they could no longer get away with murder – because I would expose them". Motorway service stations joined railways as a particular target of his ire for the "pigswill" routinely purveyed.

He downplayed the guides' influence in making consumers more adventurous, acknowledging Elizabeth David's success in raising awareness of French and Italian cooking. In his view, the greatest single change had come through the emergence of a new class in the 1960s – "pop stars, advertising people, photographers and so on" – who found ways of making money without the benefit of a public school education. Their great love of eating out meant that food began to be a topic of conversation in its own right, an interest that was increasingly reflected in newspapers and magazines. At Cradock's prompting, Ronay started writing a gastronomic column for the Daily Telegraph in 1954, and continued with various publications including the Sunday Telegraph, London Evening News and, from 1986 to 1992, the Sunday Times. He then became editor-in-chief of the magazine Egon Ronay Recommends for the British Airports Authority, and until 2002 managed a team keeping tabs on catering standards at its seven airports. His consultancy work continued, and he produced guides covering other parts of Europe; his most personal publication was The Unforgettable Dishes of My Life (1989).

Ronay is survived by his second wife, Barbara, whom he married in 1967; by their son, Gerard; and by his daughters Edina and Esther from his first marriage.

Tom Jaine writes: One morning 30 years ago, while washing glasses and laying tables at the country restaurant where I worked, I was informed that Mr Egon Ronay would be telephoning me at 10 o'clock the next day and could I be there to take the call. The news provoked a feast of reverie. Restaurant of the year? The nation's best wine-cellar? My euphoria was a measure of the man and his guides. In the event, he came on the line at the appointed hour (to the second) and his inquiry was of such astonishing banality that I cannot recall its subject.

Survival in his chosen field was his great achievement. Producing an annual guide is expensive, though Egon was a legendary manager of finite resources. He kept afloat by virtue of continuous sponsorship from companies such as the British Motor Corporation, Lucas and Dunlop, which ensured that someone paid for all those dinners.

He also kept the guides in public view with a gimlet eye for a good story. His bread-and-butter material were the reports of individual restaurants, but the headlines came from his various campaigns to raise the standards of Britain's public catering. The targets were the softest of the soft, but they needed a sharp jab in the stomach if they were ever going to get better. He delivered multiple blows to motorway service stations, airlines and airports, and the nation stands in his debt. They may still be dreadful, but without him they would be worse.

The Ronay guides themselves were tedious. His background lay in international haute cuisine, and his preferences were for restaurants of that ilk. In the 1960s, while the consumers who maintained The Good Food Guide were tremendously keen on jolly amateurs who tried very hard and on the growing number of ethnic restaurants in the big cities, Egon catered more for the sharp-suited travelling class who liked proper food served by men in tails. Adventure and enthusiasm were not part of his brief, which may make for fewer disasters but also much less enjoyment.

As the standards of British restaurant cooking improved (not, I think, because of the influence of any critics, but due rather to changes in society and attitudes), so did the importance and accuracy of the guides themselves. Egon rode this wave with aplomb. His judgement of the new generation of chefs that came to the fore during the 1970s was pretty true and his standing benefited from their mutual admiration.

But this does not mean his guides became any more readable. An entry might have been written in Linear Script B for all the information it gave beyond the recitation of colourless fact. Chefs and proprietors would contemplate for hours their allotted six lines of prose to disinter any hint of a value judgment. Criticism of clientele, locale or decoration was evidently out of bounds to his copywriters. But still the Guide survived, buoyed each year by a new campaign or angle and very canny marketing.

Egon himself was a small man and, in presentation, perfectly formed. His manner was self-contained and, to the professional acquaintance, somewhat humourless and self-regarding. There was a little of that in his British Academy of Gastronomes, which he founded in 1983. This was a self-appointed group of stomachs that dished out lifetime achievement awards and had good dinners. There is not a lot of fun in a dinner of gastronomes: they tend to the pompous, as does gastronomy. It is in a way piquant that Egon will be better remembered for his assault on Scratchwood and Watford Gap than for his delight in lobster à l'armoricaine.

•Egon Ronay, food critic and publisher, born 24 July 1915; died 12 June 2010

When Egon Ronay arrived in Britain from Hungary in 1946, the food was so bad he started his own restaurant. Those famous eating-out guides followed, but in 1985 he lost control of the empire that bore his name. Now, reports Rachel Cooke, he's planning a comeback.